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I've been using No$GBA few years ago when it was still being updated, but nowadays, just DesMume. It was a great thing when I had no DS, but nowadays I rarely use it. I use it only for trading between Black and White.

This is a toughie.I use them both and both are great.No$Gba has speed and easy to use, though some latest Gen games doesn't really work in it.And it isn't regularly updated.DeSmuMe on the other hand works mostly perfectly but it doesn't really have the speed or too many options mostly because it is new and it does have awesome graphics too.So i'm going with DeSmuMe for now because hopefully it will updated to have good speed in the future.

desmume is seriously for 2ds. some 3ds works for ik nicely but some 3ds dont work properly(lag lag lag!!!)
no$gba is good too but you cant play any new poke games. i tried but all it says is.
save file cant open etc. turn of the game and reinsert the gamecard something. and its graphics are... below average.

If you have a good processor, then DeSmuME blows No$ out of the water... since I don't it runs slow on my PC. There's also the derivative with the JIT recompiler which allows for much higher performance, allowing me to run White 2 full speed with H2QxS on.

My Desmume 9.9 JIT( not official ) Is A lot Faster Than The No$GBA emulator.
and my desmume 9.8 is kinda faster too.
NO$GBA graphics is a FAIL for me. the opening of pokemon black 2 just show a white screen on the bottom screen, reason bad graphics.
here is a thing i found which is true.
{DeSmuME runs too slow!
Yeah, for you and everyone else. New releases may always be a step backwards in some (or many) cases from earlier releases in terms of speed. There is a delicate balance between compatibility and speed and sometimes one advances further than the other.
I will be frank: DeSmuME focuses more on compatibility and perks than on speed. Our philosophy is, you can always mow some extra lawns or babysit some more rugrats to buy upgrades for your computer; but there's nothing you can do to fix compatibility and perks. We take care of our side of things, so you should take care of yours.
At any rate, here is the master list of tricks to speed things up:
Don't use external BIOS images.
If you ARE using external BIOS images, (or must for some reason) try enabling Patch DelayLoop SWI
Try switching between OpenGL Renderer and Software Rasterizer. You may not like the results, but it may get you more speed.
Disable this option: Config > Emulation Settings > Enable Bus-Level Timing.
Use Dual SPU in the Sound Settings, and don't use Advanced SPU Logic.
In the Sound Settings, set interpolation to none.
If you can handle it, turn off the sound altogether. Try listening to a shoutcast instead; I recommend happyday new age or ah.fm!
Don't use the NOSSE2 build.
Don't use someone else's unofficial "SVN" build, it probably is not fully optimized, since we make our Windows releases using some profiler-guided optimization, which helps by several FPS.
Use frame skip. Even frameskipping by 1 will help and many games will stay playable. Frameskipping is continually tweaked in each release to get more bang for the buck, but beware that dual screen 3d games still may not work well under frameskip. If screens seem stuck, pick a different frameskip value.
There is now the option of disabling an entire screen. (Tools > View Layers > Main GPU, etc) Consider disabling a screen which is useless in the game you are playing. NOTE: View > LCDs Layout > One LCD *WILL NOT* increase your speed. This merely hides the lcd, but it is still rendered. This is important for dual screen games and other weird cases.
Don't scale the window anything different than 1x and don't use resize filters.
If you are using the software rasterizer, disable edge marking and fog if you feel like they aren't needed. If the game isn't using those features then this won't help.
Buying a newer, faster computer is somewhat more expensive, but it has other side benefits.
Don't use a netbook.
If you're using a laptop/notebook, try disabling power management or setting the system to run in maximum performance. Desktop users should consider investigating this too, just in case. Additionally, desktop users should investigate whether their system is clogged with dust, or a fan is malfunctioning, or a heatsink has fallen off of a chip. Tons of people run into these problems, believe it or not. Finally, all AMD users should disable Cool'n'quiet which doesn't work worth a crap.
Your graphics card is irrelevant. Upgrade your CPU.}

For me, Desmume is better. Some games don't work on No$gba, every game works on Desmume. Desmume for MAC works perfectly, and on windows it depends, it works if your computer is strong or if it isn't affected by virus.

I personally took a third option. Flashcarts. Sure, you have to pay money for them but it's worth the luxury of being able to play roms on hardware.

This.

Nothing like the real DS to play games on.

I've decided for myself that DS emulation is probably not going to reach the level of a VBA or another top emulator. The options simply aren't that good.

IMO it's unforgivable that Desmume is so slow on many machines. I thought it was because people were trying to run it on ancient single core Pentium 4 processors for example, but that's not the case. The DS is not a very special thing hardware-wise, it's on the level of a N64 if not worse, yet many PCs struggle to run Desmume, because it's unoptimized as hell.

Another reason I decided to stop supporting Desmume is their attitude towards Pokémon games. As many of you may know, HGSS have several bugs in Desmume. People thought it was the anti-piracy thing, but one of the Desmume devs actually admitted it was a fault of the emulator itself (and flashcarts). The fix is supposed to be easy, yet they've never done it. Why? Because "we don't care enough about Pokémon games", or "we aren't going to support Pokémon games". Well, maybe you should, because one of the main reasons people even buy a DS is to play Pokémon. It's probably the biggest Nintendo franchise on the DS, and HGSS is one of the latest highlights of the console.

Furthermore, there are a few annoying graphical errors in 4th gen games with Desmume which put me off.

Regarding No$GBA, I wonder why people still use it anymore. It's outdated, needs AR codes for most modern games, can't even maximize window without an external application, and its graphical capabilities are horrendous. I was never a fan of the No$ series. I remember when No$GBC way back in 2002(?) was shareware and there were freeware emulators with much better capabilities.

DS emulation has its uses. For someone without a 3rd gen game and a DS Phat/Lite, Desmume is the only way to run Pal Park, even though it's, once again, buggy. But I think that, in the case of the DS, abandoning it is the way to go. Vertical LCD mode (which is the way the games are supposed to be played) looks like crap in a modern widescreen monitor, and using mouse to reproduce touch screen is less than optimal (Pokéathlon was a nightmare for me). Besides, now that Desmume is pretty much the only DS emulator with good playback and compatibility, I expect the team to lessen work on it and not fix what should be fixed, since they don't have any competition. Luckily they aren't like the PJ64 devs, though, which took donations and are delaying their latest public release since 6 or 7 years ago.

__________________

Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire, the day Pokémon pulled a Dallas and jumped the shark.

For emulation purposes, no$gba has worked wonders for me, after I got the external zoomer on board. My laptop was built for gaming so I don't have any performance issues to speak of and I haven't encountered any errors on Platinum (yet).

My intention, though, is to build a gamesave on no$gba, then when I eventually either repair my DS or buy a new one, transfer a (converted to DS) .sav file over to the good old R4 flashcart and play it on proper DS hardware. Emulation is great, but as is mentioned above by The Corrupt Plague, and seconded by Cerberus7, you can't beat the real thing.

Still, needs must, and i've played on worse emulators.

My only real issue is the lack of being able to battle or trade. That's kind of half the fun of Pokemon, and (as far as I know, and please do correct me if i'm wrong on this...) there doesn't seem to be a way to make this happen on no$gba.

My only real issue is the lack of being able to battle or trade. That's kind of half the fun of Pokemon, and (as far as I know, and please do correct me if i'm wrong on this...) there doesn't seem to be a way to make this happen on no$gba.

Then start using DeSmuME Trading and wi-fi battling is an important aspect that makes DeSmuME so great =)

I've been using No$GBA few years ago when it was still being updated, but nowadays, just DesMume. It was a great thing when I had no DS, but nowadays I rarely use it. I use it only for trading between Black and White.

I'm running WinXP Home Edition with a 2 GHz processor, 3 GB RAM, and a 2 GB graphics card...but I can't get DesMume configured decently to save my life. As much as I'd like to try the Gen IV games on a DS emulator, I was hoping that some freeware option was as user-friendly as VBA is for earlier games. So far, though, I haven't found one. *shrug*

EDITED TO ADD: I've tried the latest No$GBA with the Gen IV games, but always gotten fatal crash/invalid file errors when I did. If there's a way to get No$GBA playing NDS files, could someone please teach me how? (Private responses are welcome if the moderators consider them off-topic here.)

Update on my vote, I just downloaded desmume 0.9.9 JIT x86 and played with it.
faster than the old desmume, faster than nogba (surprisingly), plays all games withh no lag, perfect sound.
Problem, no wifi support on any emulators. Crazy right?

FOR ALL USERS WITH PROBLEMS ON DESMUME, DOWNLOAD DESMUME JIT 0.9.9 FOR YOUR OPERATING SYSTEM SET FRAME SKIP TO 5, DISABLE THE BUS THING IN EMULATOR OPTIONS, IN SOUND OPTIONS USE DUAL CPU AND SET THE LINEAR THING TO NONE. THEN IN 3D USE RASTIRIZER
DISABLE ALL OPTIONS EXCEPT THE TWO BOTTOM ONES. CLOSE DESMUME AND REOPEN THEN PLAY ANY ROM AND IT WILL BE FULL SPEED
IF YOU WANT HD, GO TO MAGNIFICATION FILTER, THEN HQSYS2
HOPE I HELPED

After a lot of trial and error, I learned to choose emulators based on the generation of the game I'm playing: No$GBA for Gens II-III, Desmume for Gens IV-V. The older games run more easily on the older emulator; the newer ones can be saved with more states, although it's harder to share *.ds* files here.

Both programs have their good and bad points, as I mentioned before; but if you're looking for an emulator that can handle fan-made hacks and Gen IV/V games smoothly...go with DeSmuME. Learning to customize it is worth the trouble.

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